Site Mobile Navigation

City Council Favors Pregnancy Center Disclosures

The City Council passed a bill on Wednesday seeking more transparency from crisis pregnancy centers that present themselves as medical clinics but that critics say offer little more than pregnancy tests and counseling intended to steer women away from abortions.

“The goal of this bill is to ensure that women are fully informed and not deceived,” the Council speaker, Christine C. Quinn, said. “Women need to know, they have a right to know, whether they are consulting with a licensed medical provider.”

A spokeswoman for Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, Evelyn Erskine, said the mayor would sign the bill in the coming weeks. The vote on the bill was 39 to 9, with 1 abstention.

Under the legislation, centers would be required to disclose whether they provide abortions or emergency contraception and if they have a licensed medical provider on site.

Standing on the steps of City Hall before the vote, supporters of the measure, including representatives from Planned Parenthood and the New York Civil Liberties Union, said the bill was an issue of consumer protection and truth in advertising.

These centers, they said, offer ultrasound exams and outfit their employees in medical scrubs, but do not provide licensed medical care. Sometimes, they said, a center is set up right across the street from a Planned Parenthood clinic. Councilwoman Jessica Lappin, who represents parts of Manhattan, said she first became aware of such centers about a year ago and began drafting the bill.

“I read about them and thought they couldn’t possibly exist in New York City,” she said. “But I did a little research and found out that they did.”

The effort to pass a bill gained momentum in October, Ms. Lappin said, after Naral Pro-Choice New York released a report saying it had found crisis pregnancy centers in the city using deceptive tactics and false claims to dissuade women from having abortions.

Ms. Lappin said she expected that the new requirements would affect at least a dozen centers around the city, based on testimony given at a Council hearing last year and on research by the Council and by Naral.

But opponents say that Ms. Lappin’s legislation violates free speech rights, and that it is similar to a Baltimore measure that was recently struck down by a federal judge.

“This bill is unconstitutional,” said City Councilman Daniel J. Halloran, a representative from Queens and a lawyer, who voted against the bill on Wednesday. “When you target speech, it’s inherently unconstitutional.”

“I am going to have to read a government script every time a girl approaches us,” Mr. Slattery said. “It’s government-regulated speech, which is content- and viewpoint-targeted. It is unconstitutional because it does not apply to abortion facilities. It only applies to us because of our viewpoint on abortion.”

Donna Lieberman, the executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, which consulted on the bill, said it was tailored in such a way that its constitutionality would withstand legal challenges.

“That is not viewpoint-based; it’s about deception,” Ms. Lieberman said. “Unlicensed ideologues have a right to be ideologues, to espouse their beliefs. But they don’t have the right to dress up as doctors and masquerade as health care providers and deceive women into thinking they’ve been to the doctor when they have not.”

Juliet Linderman and Tim Stelloh contributed reporting.

A version of this article appears in print on March 3, 2011, on page A22 of the New York edition with the headline: Council Votes for Disclosure
By Pregnancy Centers in City. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe